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Typst 0.15.0

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Re: Typst 0.15.0

#41

Post by leephillips »

anuramat wrote: post #37
opto wrote: post #9

As a non-developer who really only uses computers to write and produce documents, why would I use typst over org-mode or $your_fave_markdown + pandoc?

I tried using markdown+pandoc for my notes for a while, but I couldn't figure out even the most basic things, mostly because of the dozens of incompatible flavors; in no particular order: - formatting math blocks is mostly not a thing; some formatters will straight up break the document depending on the flavor you use - lsp - live preview; you could use e.g. a neovim plugin for that, but it's built on top of mathjax…

“latex (required by pandoc)”

No.

`--pdf-engine=typst`

Re: Typst 0.15.0

#42

Post by applicative »

anuramat wrote: post #37
opto wrote: post #9

As a non-developer who really only uses computers to write and produce documents, why would I use typst over org-mode or $your_fave_markdown + pandoc?

I tried using markdown+pandoc for my notes for a while, but I couldn't figure out even the most basic things, mostly because of the dozens of incompatible flavors; in no particular order: - formatting math blocks is mostly not a thing; some formatters will straight up break the document depending on the flavor you use - lsp - live preview; you could use e.g. a neovim plugin for that, but it's built on top of mathjax…

Latex is in no sense required by pandoc and never has been, not ten years ago, not twenty years ago. Everything you are writing is deep conceptual confusion from top to bottom. You might as well say it has required Microsoft Word since the docx readers and writers came out.

Latex is a typical route to produce pdfs according to your specification, but typst is what I use; occasionally groff. I use latex when what I am typesetting uses greek, arabic or hebrew text, but only because I haven't yet bothered to learn the typst approach to them.

Re: Typst 0.15.0

#44

Post by leephillips »

lejalv wrote: post #7

Reminder that it's 2026 and batch-mode typesetting seems an oddly low bar for what we can get from a computer. Tree-structured documents in a live (WYSIWYG) typesetter with a programmable editor are possible, as is demonstrated by https://texmacs.org ( https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/videos.en.html if you don't have it installed).

“batch-mode typesetting seems an oddly low bar for what we can get from a computer.”

I don’t know what this is intended to mean.

“a live (WYSIWYG) typesetter”

I don’t like this mode of interaction. No, thanks.

Typst is fast enough to provide a live preview, and I can use Vim or any editor I want, along with my choice of PDF viewer.

Re: Typst 0.15.0

#45

Post by mamami »

satvikpendem wrote: post #35

Apparently Typst isn't supported by many journals, forcing LaTeX usage, anyone have experiences with this situation?

I still much prefer LaTeX actually, I don't feel like Typst improves over its main flaw, i.e. lack of consistency. One could argue that it's even more inconsistent. I really miss commands, \section for example clearly does what it says it does, while '=' is more nebulous. I don't like that instead of typing `\alpha+c` now I need to write `alpha + c` it blurs the line between what is a command and what isn't.

So imo in terms of scientific writing it's pretty off the mark

Re: Typst 0.15.0

#46

Post by jeremyscanvic »

I've switched form LaTeX to Typst for all my informal/semi-formal writing and it's a delight to work with. I hope I'll be able to use it for more formal documents in the future (conference/journal papers, slides for high stakes presentations)

Re: Typst 0.15.0

#47

Post by mr_mitm »

rayshan wrote: post #36

Typest is amazing, Claude Code + Opus 4.8 knows how to use it, but I found that Claude by default is crap at designing even a reasonably formatted PDF. E.g. Claude sets the line height to be so small, all the lines are squished together, and a 1-pager PDF is half blank. I see many folks saying you're producing beautiful PDFs. How are you dealing with design?

Have you tried showing Claude your output, or simply telling it to look at the PNG output? Together with some design or frontend skill you should get reasonable results.

Re: Typst 0.15.0

#48

Post by anuramat »

leephillips wrote: post #41
anuramat wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried using markdown+pandoc for my notes for a while, but I couldn't figure out even the most basic things, mostly because of the dozens of incompatible flavors; in no particular order: - formatting math blocks is mostly not a thing; some formatters will straight up break the document depending on the flavor you use - lsp - live preview; you could use e.g. a neovim plugin for that, but it's built on top of mathjax…

“latex (required by pandoc)” No. `--pdf-engine=typst`

but then you're limited to an undocumented subset of pandoc markdown

Re: Typst 0.15.0

#49

Post by room271 »

As a former software developer, now turned student (studying theology while I train to become a pastor), Typst has been great for writing my dissertation with one notable exception: it really doesn't handle footnotes well. Specifically, see:

https://github.com/typst/typst/pull/8147

Discursive footnotes do not really work when including bibliography references. I've also hit other issues, like footnotes appearing a page before the text they are linked from.

It's a real shame, as otherwise it's great software. I suspect footnotes are currently buggy because most users are currently from the science world and use inline referencing instead.

I'm really hoping this is fixed soon. (And once I hit my current deadline this week, I'll take a look at it myself.)

But at the moment, a big caveat for anyone working in the humanities / who uses e.g. Chicago-style footnotes.

Re: Typst 0.15.0

#50

Post by anuramat »

applicative wrote: post #42
anuramat wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried using markdown+pandoc for my notes for a while, but I couldn't figure out even the most basic things, mostly because of the dozens of incompatible flavors; in no particular order: - formatting math blocks is mostly not a thing; some formatters will straight up break the document depending on the flavor you use - lsp - live preview; you could use e.g. a neovim plugin for that, but it's built on top of mathjax…

Latex is in no sense required by pandoc and never has been, not ten years ago, not twenty years ago. Everything you are writing is deep conceptual confusion from top to bottom. You might as well say it has required Microsoft Word since the docx readers and writers came out. Latex is a typical route to produce pdfs according to your specification, but typst is what I use; occasionally groff. I use latex when what I am…

only if you don't care about the output and half the features; otherwise you can just use "mv" to compile your documents to .txt
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